Drabbles for JL
by rese
Summary: I’m a lazybones and this is a fun way to write for a tired mind. Pure unconnected JL nonsense. I'm keeping this open for when i'm bored or stuck on the longer stories.
1. Chapter 1

**Drabbles for J/L**

By rese

Summary: I'm a lazy-bones and this is a fun way to write for a tired mind. Pure unconnected J/L nonsense.

Disclaimer: from what you get out of 100 words or less, L.M.A. owns the characters.

A/N: I'm particularly lazy this week as I'm not 100 in the health department and half yearlies are a week away. So here's some drabbles to keep the readers satisfied, because looking at the dwindling updating status of the fandom makes me depressed.

…

Laurie felt her head hit his shoulder and wondered why she didn't use the desk.

"It's hopeless! I'm hopeless! Ugh, I've had enough, don't make me go back."

"There, there." He patted the brown head patronizingly as she gave him a particularly vicious look. "Cheer up, Jo, maybe you won't be a famous writer and no one will pressure you to sit down and write them a script. Think of all the spare time you'll have!"

She quickly spun around and put her head down to finish the play after that.

…

Three stones skipped across the pond, one after the other and Jo bit back a grin at the proud look of her successful boy.

"Well done, lad, but beat this!" and Jo picked up a rock the size of her fist and dumped it in the water very purposefully. Laurie laughed as she crossed her arms and effected his previous expression.

"Amy's the best anyway," she explained when he'd sobered and they stood back, watching the blonde girl turning rocks into water flies.

"Maybe in some things," he spoke quietly and took her hand in the late summer light.

…

"Oh, what have you done!?" cried little Amy, her nose red and brow furrowed when she pulled her head out from behind the oven door. "They're as brown as figs and they're supposed to be 'golden', Jo."

The older girl made a face and poked her tongue out as she collapsed in a huff at the kitchen table. "Meg knows I can't cook for pegs, it's her fault. She should never have asked."

"But it was for Laurie and she knows how you like to please him," said Beth, shuffling between the scowling girls, one hand patting Jo's defiant shoulder and the other holding Joanna.

Jo turned as red as Amy's toasted nose.

…

She laughed harder and harder as he continued to read that he had to stop when she held a hand to her throat and went a painful red.

"Oh! Ow, Laurie." Jo rasped still grinning between breaths. The boy's expression was far more serious as his concern grew at her inability to breathe properly.

"I'm sorry, Jo" he rubbed her back. "I should have known not to read this when you're sick. I just wanted to cheer you up." And he looked so pathetic that without regard to contagions and germs Jo pecked him on the cheek for his troubles.

"You did well, my boy."


	2. Chapter 2

"Jo," he whispered in her ear and she struggled to contain another burst of laughter as he clapped a large hand over her mouth.

"You'll get us caught!"

The girl rolled her eyes but he could still feel her smile against his palm and he had to grin too.

Spying on Jo was all good fun, but spying with her was something else.

…

He watched her immobile face, knowing that she thought she'd fooled them into thinking she was fine. That she was alright with Brooke leaving his hand on Meg's gloved one as she reached for the door.

Laurie knew better, he always had, for those grey eyes held all, like a keyhole for him to peep into her thoughts and feelings.

And Josephine March did not like the feelings John Brooke had for her sister Margaret.

So he'd smile and distract her and pray that she'd change her mind by the time he found the courage to mimic very similar feelings.

…

"You aren't sorry for anything?" he asked and Jo looked away from the intense look which betrayed the wearer.

"I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with Bethy," she answered safely and honestly.

"Of course. Aren't we all?" But it wasn't what he wanted to know.

It never was.

…

"Teddy!"

No one said his name like her. It wasn't just the nickname, but the way she never left the unabashed enthusiasm behind in its pronunciation.

"Teddy, I'm so glad you've come! You won't believe what's happened this week! _Such doings_!" But he would for she always wrote and he wouldn't skim over a single word.

"Let your college fellow sit down and put his feet up first, dear girl. And fetch Beth for the good gossip, won't you?" And Jo would only pull a face at his teasing bossiness, smile, press a quick kiss to his waiting cheek and scamper off.

And he never regretted catching up at school.

…

"Lord in heaven, what is that mess!?" Jo exclaimed with great drama at the corner in the small parlour.

"Oh – no, Jo! Leave it! Please?" said Laurie, having quite a time trying to pull his friend from the pile of books and parchment.

"Oh, but it's no trouble," she managed to squeak out once the taller boy had wrenched her away from the corner, forcing her to look in the opposite direction.

"Honestly, Jo, this compulsion isn't natural. Who wants to clean on a day like today?" Laurie pointed out the window he had directed her to helpfully. But his slightly younger friend was not one to be easily deterred and as soon as he released her shoulders she had tidied and neatened quicker than he could blink.

"If it makes you happy..."

"You know it does."

…

"My, my!" spoke the intruder, fanning herself with the expensive accessory.

Jo flew up off Laurie's lap with a red face and flustered shock. Briefly, she tried to gesture between them, her mouth moving in a mute attempt for explanation. But the tall, dark haired woman merely smiled in mistaken knowledge at the scarlet girl and her amused friend before she winked and turned about.

"No, you don't understand!" Jo finally called futilely at the retreating girl's back as she disappeared down the curtained corridor. Letting her arms flop to her side in defeat Jo walked backwards to sit beside Laurie who still wore an expression of contained delight.

"Promise me you won't tell anyone about this." She asked the tall boy.

"There, there, Jo. In twenty minutes we'll be the only people _not_ speaking about this in the theatre."


	3. Chapter 3

"Laurie," Jo panted, still out of breath from the game. They lay on the bank of the road, desperately trying to gain a second wind for the next round whilst the two younger girls stood on the other side of the dirty lane, whispering fiercely about their plan to win next time.

"Tell me things will always be the same."

The dark-haired boy turned his head to face his friend who had a look on her brown face that made him decidedly serious. It didn't take a genius to figure out her concern.

He was going to college in two months.

…

"I have to go," she told him and Laurie couldn't help but think that it should have been he saying those words. It should have been he with the tone of apology in his voice. It should have but it wasn't.

"I know." _I just wish it wasn't so_. But there was nothing else he could do and there was nothing else to say but goodbyes that were half-hearted and mostly meaningless.

The real good byes, Laurie thought as he bent to receive a kiss from the woman who wasn't and should have been his wife, happened long before he should have cared.

…

"Heaven's you can't be serious, my girl!" Laurie laughed a deep, chesty laugh which coloured his face with a merriness Jo wouldn't have missed for the world.

Only she could make him turn that shade of red.

"Well I shouldn't be if you'd kill yourself over it," said she as her friend almost fell off the fence with his amusement. Swiftly he clasped Jo's arm to steady himself, letting his hand linger longer than necessary after he'd sat up.

"Alright?" Jo asked, not merely inquiring about the state of his usually dangerous person.

And again, only she could make him turn that shade of red.

…

It took Jo a few seconds shorter than he had calculated to read the bit of paper under the door and it meant a few seconds of unplanned awkwardness.

"Well?" Laurie asked when he finally reached seventeen in his head. Jo looked up and eyed his nervous legs which couldn't seem to still.

"I think if you're truly serious about it, then you may do as you like, dear."

_Dear_. Her use of noun gave a start of hope that not even her generous criticism over his thesis had.

"Thank you, Jo! I'll mention you in my graduation speech to be sure - I promise!" and with a spontaneous peck to her cheek and leap out of the room he was gone off again.


End file.
